It is no secret that cassette tapes have made a huge comeback in the past 5 years. They are used not only as a way to sell physical copies of your albums but also as a part of the music production process. Here we are going to explore how people used cassettes and 4 track tape recorders to create music but most importantly why they use them.

If you could ask all the composers and musicians that use cassette tapes in their productions why they do it, they would probably answer you with two words. Tape Saturation. Running any kind of signal through tape would instantly add color and saturation in the most organic and ear-pleasing way. And when you add to that the physical wobble and flutter that appears when you play the cassette through your tape deck, you’ll immediately fall in love with the character and LoFi vibe your recording gets. Another great feature, that most 4 track recorders and tape decks have is Pitch Control and Tape Speed. Playing with the pitch knob or playing the tape at half-speed will exaggerate its character making things crunchy and noisy. If you are looking for an organic LoFi ambient sound that’s the way to go.

Tape loops. Another experimental and surprisingly inspiring way to generate ideas and create textures for your productions. But what is a tape loop? It is a technique where you chop a small piece of tape (called splice), then glue it back again and let it run to infinity as you record loops and overdubs as many times as you want. The more you overdub, the more your loops will be destructed (in the best way possible, trust me). The size of the tape defines the length of the loop. This is essentially another form of a looper pedal where you cannot really control its time since it is tied to the tape length and you cannot of course undo/ redo as you do with a modern looper. Tape loops can get extremely wobbly and noisy and that’s their biggest strength.

See here how you can create a tape loop!

Blankfor_ms Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewf3QSbDFD4

AMULETS Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER3s1NPr_U

Instagram factor. We live at a time where – unfortunately – content is king. And cassettes are sexy as hell. When your audience sees you using cassettes and tape decks, they are instantly struck by nostalgia, and it certainly is an interesting way of creating music – thus a great piece of visual content. I’m sure lots of producers jumped on the “tape train” just for sharing their experiments on Instagram and getting more followers with no actual appreciation for the tools they use but that’s a common thing to pretty much anything these days…

The bad news that comes with the hype factor of tape is definitely the prices. So many people are after a Tascam Portastudio that their prices have gone up to historical highs.

Price history of the Tascam 414 MKII on Reverb

If you still looking for a Tape Recorder there are lots of options to choose from on reverb.com.

Here are some of our favorite picks:

Foldy Makes - Sidecar Cassette Mods

Honorable mention to Foldy Makes that takes small portable cassette recorders, mods them to add speed control, and re-sells them. They look simply amazing!